Humanity exists in cycles. We’re born, we propagate, and we die — with luck, improving things for the next generation before we go. In between are a multitude of steps and phases leading toward one stage and away from another. We tend to forget this bit, treating children and young adults as just that before throwing them into full-adulthood wherein they wonder, “how did I only learn this in my 30s?”. It’s one of the major changes that newer parents are beginning to adopt: recognizing their children as people who are forms taking shape as opposed to the old style of shaping the children into a form. But, even when one has the best of intentions, there’s still a typical period wherein parents are the safety space for a child and there’s a learning curve for when said child realizes that their parents aren’t an entire perfect world, but a small part of an imperfect one in which those heralded caretakers struggle to survive. For her feature film debut, Janet Planet, writer/director (and 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright) Annie Baker explores the liminal space of adolescence through the lens of one youngster as she discovers that the world within herself and outside herself are at a crossroads from which life will be forever changed.
L-R: Julianne Nicholson as Janet and Zoe Ziegler as Lacy in JANET PLANET. Photo Credit/Courtesy of A24.
Summer 1991: Uncomfortable at camp, Lacy (newcomer Zoe Ziegler) comes home to spend the summer with her single-parent mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) in rural Massachusetts. Rather than spending quality time with Janet ahead of her sixth-grade year, Lacy discovers herself in a tug-of-war for attention between Janet’s suitors and friends. With choice after choice resulting in less time together, Lacy begins to ponder what love means.
L-R: Zoe Ziegler as Lacy and Julianne Nicholson as Janet in JANET PLANET. Photo Credit/Courtesy of A24.
There are plenty of films about growing up, coming of age, and the like. What separates Janet Planet from the typical is its use of perspective and the soundscape incorporated within it. Past the opening sequence when we first meet Lacy, the drive home from camp features Lacy in the back while her mother rides in the passenger seat and Janet’s boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton) driving. A different director would opt to place Lacy in full frame, perhaps even place the character in the middle seat ensure that the audience sees the character as someone between Janet and Wayne. This would create a sense of activity and agitation, to be sure, placing Lacy as someone with specific intent. Instead, Baker places Lacy next to the back-passenger window with part of her face missing, even when she turns her head inward to look upfront. It’s a choice that implies an internal segmentation, of someone who’s not fully present or within the realm of the story. From here, Baker shifts the camera focus to look at Janet, but, again, Baker opts for a different angle than the traditional coverage that might capture Janet from the front or even to present her fully from the side. Instead, Baker uses an angle that implies the POV is what Lacy can see (part of a neck, an ear, and face) with the camera pushing in so as to make the details more prominent and feel more intimate. This implies affection, analysis, and adoration on the part of Lacy with the timing of it with Janet talking with Wayne and not engaging Lacy, setting up how this relationship may only go one way and getting the audience to consider what that means.
L-R: Sophie Okonedo as Regina and Julianne Nicholson as Janet in JANET PLANET. Photo Credit/Courtesy of A24.
So much of what follows in the narrative is languid yet deliberate, almost a manifestation of the heat that seems to pour into the Massachusetts summer. Through it, sound designer Paul Hsu (Spotlight; Tick, Tick…Boom!) wraps the audience up in something as simple as the sound of a fan relentless oscillating as Lacy plays her portable piano, the natural sounds of rural nocturnal life, or the crunch of feet upon gravel as Lacy walks to and from a piano lesson. In the several story house that Janet and Lacy occupy, a structure that seems to incorporate a great deal of open planning, each room is nonetheless filled with sound. This acoustic component fills the audience’s senses, bringing back memories for those of us who remember open windows, rustling leaves, and insect calls. The soundscape is an integral piece of Janet Planet as it fills up the narrative space where dialogue doesn’t. Just as Maria von Hausswolff’s (A White, White Day) cinematography conveys Lacy’s perspective, often matching or mirroring what Lacy sees to Lacy herself, so does the sound give the audience the sense of her internal point of view. So, when we see Lacy lying on the grass, we can almost feel the ground beneath ourselves; when she walks on the road, we can nearly sense the tension in the uneven, well-worn thoroughfare; when she goes to play with her toy theater, the song that plays from her music box is all that we know as we enter Lacy’s hyperfocus state.
L-R: Julianne Nicholson as Janet and Zoe Ziegler as Lacy in JANET PLANET. Photo Credit/Courtesy of A24.
Though Ziegler has a small following on YouTube with her equestrian-centric channel, Janet Planet marks her first time acting, and it’s a dazzling outing in the way that she does so much with very little — her physical response to something, even if just a head-tilt or eye water being all that we’re given, saying all we need. This will surely be a breakout performance for the actor at the start of her career. As Ziegler’s scene partner and sometimes antagonist for Lacy, Julianne Nicholson (Dream Scenario; Weird: The Al Yankovic Story) walks a delicate line as her performance makes the audience feel sympathy for the struggles of being a single mom while also trying to maintain her individual identity. Nicholson makes Janet relatable and desirable in the sense that we would want to spend time with the character, but also see aspects that Lacy is less willing to acknowledge. Especially as supporting characters come in and out, Patton’s (Mirai) Wayne, Sophie Okonedo’s (Hellboy) Regina, and Elias Koteas’s (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) Avi, – each one given their own segment, organizing the film into acts – we and Lacy are shown the wonders that are Janet and the aspects that are worth growing away from.
Zoe Ziegler as Lacy in JANET PLANET. Photo Credit/Courtesy of A24.
As a film that explores the relationship between parent and child, a symbiosis that is often disregarded or ignored with titles like “clingy” or “introverted,” it may focus on the daughter-mother bond, but don’t mistake that to mean it can’t apply to other genders or familial connections. Parents are the first tie that children have in this life, their identity often summed as a tether before breaking out onto their own path. That Lacy wants to cosleep with Janet, to go where she goes, to be as underfoot (visible, if you will), makes sense within the perspective of Janet being Lacy’s entire world. But just like Lacy mistakes her camp experience as a bad one and comes home early, she discovers that *wanting* to be with her mother doesn’t mean that it’s reciprocated, resulting in Lacy learning that not all choices come with expected outcomes. A slow burn of a film that doesn’t outwardly state what it is or what it seeks to do, Baker’s Janet Planet encapsulates that warm, languid feeling of summer, using that energy to softly propel Lacy’s awakening into a new status as a little woman. While there are elements that don’t always come together, it nonetheless lingers as one contemplates it.
In select theaters June 21st, 2024.
Opening in North Carolina June 28th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official A24 Janet Planet webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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